Guest Profile

Mary Morganelli

Mary Morganelli, an artist, immigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada from Italy in late 1958 along with her parents, and a two month old baby brother. Mary has always had a passion in drawing and painting from a young age. When she was in her teens she registered for art lessons through a mail-in correspondence course and attended an art class in High School. When Mary married, her life was focused on raising a family. While raising a family her hopes were always there that one day she would return to painting again. Her second child fell very sick at the age of 8 months. His disease was terminal; she was constantly visiting doctors and hospitals. This disease had affected his brain; he was having seizers and was severely disabled. After three years he peacefully passed away, he was just shy of 4 years old. This was a very devastating time in her life. After 40 years of marriage and family, she wanted to return to painting so Mary decided to take a refresher course to see if her art talent was still salvageable. At this time in her life her was father was diagnosed with Alzheimer and Mary turned to art as a method of relaxation therapy. During her art refresher course she was assigned to paint a portrait on a social issue. Her teacher wanted this assignment to focus on a world issue, example - war, abortion, drugs, environment, etc. but Mary had an inspiration to paint an Alzheimer portrait of her father, against her teacher's instructions. With long hours of research on the disease, and seeing how it was affecting her father, she painted an inspirational portrait on her interpretation of Alzheimer. Her teacher was very pleased with the portrait and rewarded with top marks.
Art has the potential of healing the mind and soul. It is a great way to relieves mental stress and Mary finds painting as a haven of relaxation and a peace of mind and to help her cope with the problem of her father's disease.